Portraiture Lighting

An idea I had near the start of the project was that I could take photos of myself that imitated portraits I have of my grandparents, then possibly overlay them with the original portraits.

I had a session with Sam Chick in the studio to start learning how to use the lighting and studio equipment. We went over a 4 light setup, then tried to replicate the lighting in one of my grandfather's portraits.

Experimenting with 4 light setup:

Replicating the lighting in my grandfather's portrait:

I used a round metal reflector, 2 soft boxes to light the background, a soft box to light the face, and a polyboard on either side. I used a black one to block some of the light from the metal reflector, and this was the most successful. The second polyboard was white and it reflected white light onto the right side of the face.

Sam Chick also gave me a few artists to look into:

- Yusef Karsh

- Clarence Bull

- Richard Avedon

- Irving Penn